1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cooling mechanism, a heat sink and an electronic equipment for cooling an electronic component such as CPU or other heat generating elements and a fabrication method for the electronic equipment, and more particularly a cooling mechanism, a heat sink and an electronic equipment on which most suitable cooling mechanism can be mounted corresponding to the amount of the heat generated by an electronic component or other heat generating elements, and a fabrication method for the electronic equipment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Downsizing of electronic equipment such as a computer and the like having CPU have been remarkably improved with an increased performance. A heat is generated while an electronic component such as a CPU is in operation. Failure of heat dissipation from the electronic component may cause deteriorated performance of electronic components or in some cases result in a failure of the component itself. Cooling mechanism is required to prevent such condition. As electronic equipment is becoming smaller in size in recent years, a cooling space becomes narrower. Therefore cooling mechanism having high performance is desired.
Conventionally a heat sink has been used for a cooling mechanism of an electronic component such as a CPU (for example, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei-8-316384.) A heat sink is closely attached to the surface of an electronic component to dissipate heat therefrom. Either a cooling fin or both cooling fin and cooling fan are often used to improve the cooling capability.
However, when the electronic component produces large amount of heat, it is insufficient if heat sink only is used. For this reason, there has been proposed a method of using of an equipment frame which have a plate of large radiation area. The heat transferred in the heat sink is further transferred to a radiation plate (as an auxiliary cooling member) through a conduction member (for example, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei-10-107468). According to the disclosure, there is proposed a heat sink configured by a radiation plate to be pushed onto a CPU with a heat conduction member having resilient property.
In recent years, information processing equipment such as a notebook computer, desk-top PC, etc. has a high performance CPU which produces different heat amount (or consumes different power amount) depending on the operation frequency thereof. For example, a CPU having an operation frequency of 366 MHz (e.g. Intel Celeron 366) consumes power of approximately 9 W (watts), while another CPU having an operation frequency of 650 MHz (e.g. Intel P III 650) consumes power of approximately 14 W.
Meanwhile, low cost is strictly required for such information processing equipment. If a cooling mechanism corresponding to the highest power consumption among a series of CPUS is applied to a CPU which consumes small power, the equipment cost is undesirably increased. Therefore a cooling mechanism fit for the power consumption of a CPU in use is desirably applied. In addition, it is also desirable that major components of a cooling mechanism can be assembled at a later stage in order to meet a BTO (build-to-order) requirement in manufacturing information processing equipment.
In the conventional art, when a heat sink and a heat conduction pipe are separately configured, it is possible to select proper combination of a heat sink and a heat conduction pipe corresponding to the CPU capability. However, there is a problem that it is difficult to make the heat sink in surface contact with the CPU because this contact is comprised of that the heat conduction pipe itself pushes the heat sink toward the CPU. Such configuration results in inefficient thermal absorption against heat from the CPU.
Also, there is another problem, because a contact area between the heat sink and the heat conduction pipe is small, the heat in the heat sink is not efficiently transferred to the heat conduction pipe. Therefore cooling capability provided in the cooling mechanism cannot fully be utilized. This also results in difficulty to apply a low cost cooling mechanism for a CPU of low power consumption. To sum up, the problem hitherto is that the cost reduction is difficult when a separate configuration is applied.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a cooling mechanism, a heat sink and an electronic equipment and a fabrication method of the electronic equipment, by which a decrease of the cooling capability is prevented even when a separated cooling mechanism is applied.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a cooling mechanism, a heat sink and an electronic equipment and a fabrication method of the electronic equipment, enabling to select a cooling mechanism fit for the power consumption of a electronic component.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a cooling mechanism, a heat sink and electronic equipment and a fabrication method of the electronic equipment, enabling to reduce cost even in cooling mechanism of separate configuration.
In order to perform this object, a cooling mechanism of an electronic component and an electronic equipment according to the present invention includes: a heat sink being in contact with heat generating electronic component; a heat radiation plate for radiating heat; a heat conduction member for transferring the heat from the heat sink to the heat radiation plate; and a connection mechanism for connecting the heat sink and the heat conduction member and separating the heat sink and the heat conduction member.
According to an aspect of the present invention, a connection mechanism is provided for connecting the heat sink and the heat conduction member to be able to separate mutually. This enables the heat sink to be in surface contact independently to a heat-generating electronic component, to reduce thermal resistance between the heat sink and the electronic component. Also, the connection mechanism can reduce thermal resistance between the heat sink and the heat conduction member, enabling to prevent from deteriorating cooling capability even the heat sink is configured separately with the heat conduction member.
Therefore, a cooling mechanism fit for consumed power of an electronic component mounted to electronic equipment can be provided with low cost, even configured with a separated structure. In addition, a cooling mechanism provided with removable configuration by the connection mechanism enables easy exchange of an electronic component for grade-up or a heat sink after the equipment is shipped.
Further, the connection mechanism according to the present invention is provided to connect the heat sink and the heat conductive member such that the heat sink rotates around the heat conduction member, thereby enabling to exchange or mount the electronic component without removing the heat sink and the heat conduction member. This enables to exchange or mount the electronic component maintaining thermal transfer resistance between the heat sink and the heat conduction member of a manufacturing stage.
Still further, in the electronic equipment and the cooling mechanism according to the present invention, the connection mechanism is provided with support members for supporting the heat conduction member, and a pressing member removably provided against the support members for maintaining the heat conduction member between the support members. The fabrication method of the present invention includes the steps of; setting the heat conduction member of equipment frame to mount the electronic component, and attaching the removable heat conduction member to a support portion of the heat sink. By providing the support portion, thermal conduction resistance between the heat sink and the heat conduction member can be kept small when connection is made therebetween.
Also, in the electronic equipment, the heat sink and the cooling mechanism according to the present invention, the support portion is constructed integrally with the heat sink. This enables to reduce thermal conduction resistance between the heat sink and the heat conduction member, as well as the reduced number of component even if the connection mechanism is provided.
Further scopes and features of the present invention will become more apparent by the following description of the embodiments with the accompanied drawings.